Hillary Clinton's course correction

Hillary Clinton is one of the most practiced pols in modern politics. But for someone with a reputation of being utterly disciplined, she has a long history of gaffes — and the latest came this week as she launched her highly anticipated book rollout.

She told ABC’s Diane Sawyer on Monday that she and former President Bill Clinton left the White House “not only dead broke, but in debt.” The comment, on the eve of the release of her new memoir, was quickly branded by Republicans — and some Democrats — as self-centered and out of touch coming from a politician who collects $200,000 a pop in speaking fees.

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Clinton, who historically has been reluctant to acknowledge mistakes, walked it back the next morning.

“Let me just clarify that I fully appreciate how hard life is for so many Americans today,” she said Tuesday on “Good Morning America,” a tacit acknowledgement of how poorly the remark had played. “It’s an issue that I’ve worked on and cared about my entire adult life. Bill and I were obviously blessed. We worked hard for everything we got in our lives and we continue to work hard, and we’ve been blessed in the last 14 years, but I want to use the talents and resources I have to make sure other people get the same chances. So for me it’s just a reality: what we faced when he got out of the White House meant that we just had to keep working really hard.”

Clinton’s book, “Hard Choices,” is about her time as secretary of state — a period during which she was removed from the daily rough-and-tumble of politics. Her accompanying book tour, which is being watched closely as a possible step toward another presidential run, is new territory for Clinton: She has never been in a campaign-like setting in today’s Twitter-dominated world, in which conventional wisdom often hardens instantly online. The quick push-back to her comments on social media, the Internet and talk shows offered a taste of that.

“This is a situation where the Clintons’ ability to go so deeply into debt is a sign of the vast economic privileges they enjoyed,” argued liberal writer Matt Yglesias, writing at Vox. “Not just the ability to become millionaires after leaving office, but the ability to access certain aspects of the millionaire lifestyle even before leaving office.”

“I don’t think this is going to make a big difference a week or two from now, but the more you hear it, the worse it sounds when she talks about how hard Bill worked,” mocked MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. “Bill worked hard. He had to get on a private jet and fly to give a one-hour speech to make $200,000.”

And The Weekly Standard, a conservative publication, seized on a remark from Clinton ally Kiki McLean, who called Clinton’s assessment of the family finances in the 1990s a “statement of fact” but added that they now “have a life and a set of expectations that are different, and they’ve been fortunate to make some money.” The outlet headlined the piece, “Aide: Clintons ‘Have a Life and a Set of Expectations that Are Different’ from Middle Class.”

James Carville, who has long been close to the Clintons, chalked up the latest firestorm to what he characterized as the media’s long-held obsession with parsing Clinton’s words.

“It’s a fact of life: Every word, phrase, sentence, paragraph that she says is going to be dissected and speculated on and evaluated and interpreted,” he said. That’s only fed Clinton’s frosty relationship with the press, Carville added.

“Her favorite group of people in the country is probably not the press corps,” he said.

This is not the first instance in which Clinton critics have said she comes across as out of touch. In January, Clinton remarked that the “last time I actually drove a car myself was 1996,” drawing incredulous reactions from some observers, who argued that she didn’t seem to realize how the remark was received. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a likely presidential contender, blasted her over both issues on Tuesday.

“The sad song of her reporting her financial difficulties and the fact that she hasn’t driven herself in a car in 17 years, doesn’t sound like she’s going to connect real well with the middle class,” he told reporters.